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Hi Birders,
I was interested in the note from Victoria Quinton
and the question posed by her child " Why did they kill all the birds?" and the
fact that she did not tell us how she answered her child. Gone are the days (for
the most part) when those wicked Museum curators went out and shot
them!
While I cannot answer for the past, I can say that
currently most specimens that are used as study skins in Natural History Museums
come from road kills, birds that the cat brought it, from organisations such as
WIRES (who are often the receipients of dead and dying birds, and those that
expire become study skins), from seabird wrecks, and from birds that die as a
result of urban and industrial developments and get killed as habitat gets
cleared etc. Here in NSW, Museum staff make regular trips to NPWS country
offices where specimens have been deposited by interested staff & members of
the public, WIREs co-ordinators and interested members of the public and collect
the specimens from their freezers! These specimens become valuable additions to
the Museum and can be used as study skins, or skeleton specimens or can be
swaped with Museums overseas. Often the stomach contents are intact so that
vaulable data can be obtained on their food habits as well. Even today in my
freezer is a Bar-tailed Godwit that had been taken by a falcon but the bird was
disturbed by a maintenance crew and did not come back for its prize, and a
Brown-cuckoo Dove that flew into a window and killed itself! I am waiting for
the next pick-up!
Alan Morris
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